


i could sparkle up your eye

by sapphfics



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, Fairy Tale Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 01:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12024771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphfics/pseuds/sapphfics
Summary: She has never been nice, never wants to appear soft, and she would rather hang herself from her mother's chandelier then ever seem vulnerable.





	i could sparkle up your eye

Cheryl Blossom is the fairest one of all. Lips red as rose, hair the colour of fire, skin the colour of melted snow. Cheryl does not have the heart of it, though. She has never been nice, never wants to appear soft, and she would rather hang herself from her mother's chandelier then ever seem vulnerable. But she has ghosts haunting her backyard and she can play the part of some lost lenore if it means her brother is happy, if Jason can live the life she knows she can never even dream of. 

Honestly, she doesn't mind guarding the tower. She has always been a dragon trapped in human skin, with words that burn like flame. She has always been chained to the ground with no hope of escape. At this point, she has accepted it, but he can't. Her mother stares in mirrors all day and Jason wants to smash them all. He never deserved the family he has, a dragon for a sister, an ogre for a father, a banshee for a mother: monsters, all of them. Except him. Cheryl doesn't think Jason could never hurt anyone and now he's gone, off to rescue poor Polly from some hidden tomb, and then he can pretend he's her knight in shining armour, like Romeo and Juliette and the life they should have lived, whilst they survive off the drug money stashed in the back of a car on a forgotten road.

 _Jason,_ she thinks, _is named after a hero._ She is named for her grandmother, who's screams Cheryl can still remember after her grandfather shot himself dead in the mansion's basement several years ago. 

Besides, she will see him again soon. She has to. Once he is far enough away that their parent's have no hope of finding him. (far enough, that she will also have no hope of finding him, either.) She knows she'll never probably never see him again until she's dead in the ground, but she doesn't mind. As long as she keeps their parents off his scent, it will be worth it.

(If her parents find out she knows _anything_ , they'll rip her to pieces to try and get it out of her. She'll die before she lets them find him, before she's forced to watch them drag him back to this sick little town, kicking and screaming. She pictures her funeral, imagines her mother hiding a secret smile, her father making business connections and pretending to grieve, an empty which she hopes Jason isn't stupid enough to fill, that he's long gone and doesn't even know she's dead.)

One morning Cheryl notices Betty Cooper stumbling into to school with red-rimmed eyes so that must mean Polly got away and Cheryl grins, applies a fresh coat of lipstick. All she has to do now is wait, so that's what she does. Jason promised he would find a way to contact her and he would never lie to her.

She's going be the godmother of his future child, after all.

* * *

Jason's corpse is almost unrecognisable.

She doesn't want to think about how much worse it will appear, how many scars the doctor will leave on him, but her father's got a tight grip on her wrist so she can only look at him once.

He was supposed to come back. He was supposed to come back. He was supposed to come back.

Now, she'll be forced to watch them bury him next to her unwritten hedge stone, and she can't breathe.

(Really, she should have known better. Dragons don't get to save the day. They only burn cities to the ground. She only hopes that Riverdale will be the first town to go.)

* * *

The rest of summer passes in an unending blur of monotony and Cheryl wakes up tired no matter how much she sleeps.

Daybreak comes in the form of Josie McCoy.

She is interesting and new and Cheryl is intrigued and nothing more. (Of course, she stands outside their music practise room, heart thudding in her chest, and thinks of nothing but friendship, right?)

Cheryl bites her lip until it bleeds and tries to forget everything at the bottom of a vodka bottle. 

* * *

 In a way, Josie thinks, Cheryl Blossom is also a reminder of her old life. A reminder of who she was. Who she can never allow herself to be again.

She may have been reborn in fire but this world will end in ice.

She has no idea what Cheryl's plan is, if she even has a plan. Maybe she's some kind of agent of chaos who's lost all sympathy for the place that took her brother. Maybe not. She doesn't care. 

Still, Josie wants. She wants to hate the very ground Cheryl walks on, and she does (pretend if she repeats it enough those lingering eyes and fluttering heart will be dragged away.) Josie wants and wants and _wants_. She feels cursed sometimes. Mostly she just feels empty.

They sit on Cheryl's bed and Josie wants nothing more than to kiss her until they can both forget the pain, just for a while.

But she doesn't. 


End file.
